I can go firewire, and use the thing both with my studio computer and my laptop, or go PCI, but of course, I can't use a PCI interface with my laptop.

I want pro quality, this stuff will be used on whatever ad campaigns still trickle in. I have been a longtime MOTU 1296 user, unfortunately, thinking I was not going to do more studio work, I got rid of the 1296 (yes, I'm stupid, too).

The new MOTU Traveler and the 896HD look interesting for the dual-use, but I'm worried about issues like latency, track count, and sound quality with a Firewire based unit. But being able to use my laptop would be cool.

On the other hand, I could go with the higher end PCI based system.

I can't do both. Gotta pick one. I see that even Apogee now has firewire interfaces.

PCI-X 2.0 is up to 32x faster than PCI. PCI is still faster than firewire, though fw800 closes the gap.

The fw devices that have caught my eye lately are the Tascam dm-3200 (fw card still under development) and the Aurora 8 & 16.
With the dm-3200, it seems like you're putting all your eggs in one basket but I like having real knobs and faders. The Aurora, as you probably know, is an excellent piece of gear. I haven't heard about anyone using it with the fw option, only the aes16 pci card. The Aurora 16 would be my pick.

edit: well, as of yesterday, adat option is available for the Aurora, but no fw yet.

I still like real knobs and faders, too, but I have a 32x32x16x2 analog console with lots of 'em. What I'm concerned about is the basic I/O performance, which you indicate is still to the PCI's advantage.

The key here is to have a dedicated firewire controller, don't run a HD on the same firewire controller. Make sure your firewire controller is based on the Texas Instruments chipset, most audio firewire interfaces require it.

As of a year or so ago, it was my understanding that PCI still had the advantage over Firewire 400.

I don't know if Firewire 800 is a viable alternative.

But as Jeff pointed out, it could depend on how much tracking you plan on doing with this system. I know a lot of pros who use Firewire 400 drives for sessions away from their own studios, but I don't know how many simultaneous tracks has been the top limit of a session using one. The most I've done has been 8, I think... that was two years ago with a G4.

32 tracks at 48k (which is consistent with Jeff Flowerday's 16 trakcs at 96k) is possible with an optimized system. I've never tried it (never needed to) but it's been expressed to me that it's possible.

I still feel better about PCI. Not for any specific technical reasons - but because I've always had better performance from it. The gap is certainly closing though.

Originally posted by Bassomatic Have you pushed it further for testing purposes?

That's not very many tracks for some of us.

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No the Onyx only has 16 channels. I could have used more in a couple situations but made the 16 work.

32 @ 24bit/48K would be possible as indicated above. The Onyx can be daisy chained for more channels, that's getting too big for the portable situations I wanted it for. It's perfect as is for Live recording.

Originally posted by LSchefman The new MOTU Traveler and the 896HD look interesting for the dual-use, but I'm worried about issues like latency, track count, and sound quality with a Firewire based unit. But being able to use my laptop would be cool.

On the other hand, I could go with the higher end PCI based system.

I can't do both. Gotta pick one. I see that even Apogee now has firewire interfaces.

Does anyone here know how firewire stacks up to PCI?

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Well, I haven't tried Traveller yet (I've got one sitting here to review, just haven't opened the box yet) but the 896HD has the best latency of any interface except the RME Hammerfall DSP PCI system. Then again, can you really hear the difference between a 3ms latency and a 6ms latency? Personally, anything under 10ms sounds "immediate" to me.

As for sound quality, that has nothing to do with FireWire vs. PCI. You can be sure that the Apogee Rosetta 800 sounds excellent, whether you use it as a digital interface into a PCI interface, or via FireWire. My interface is the RME Fireface 800, and I would stack it up against the Apogee Rosetta any day (and I have owned an Apogee Rosetta as well). I have also owned Metric Halo mobile I/O interfaces, which also are on that Apogee quality level. In general, the MOTU converters are not as good as the Metric Halo, Apogee or RME interfaces. I believe the 1296 might have had better converters, but I know that all the other PCI and FireWire devices do not have that level of quality.

As for issues of "track count" perhaps if you were running your interface's maximum I/O capacity, there would be a difference, but in normal use (multiple in, stereo output) you won't see a quantifiable difference.

To me, the real issue is how many other things you have on the bus in question. In other words, if you've got a lot of FireWire devices (FW hard drives, FW PowerCore, etc) you will be better off with a PCI interface. If you have lots of other PCI devices (multiple video cards, hard drive controllers, UAD, PowerCore, etc) you'll be better with a FW interface. In the end, of course, they all go through the same system controller on your Mac, but you still want to avoid bottlenecks if possible.

Originally posted by Denyle_Guitars PCI-X 2.0 is up to 32x faster than PCI

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Do you know of any native PCI-X audio interfaces? I don't know of any. Nearly all PCI audio interface will work in PCI-X slots, but there are no PCI-X audio interfaces that I know of which are truly *native* PCI-X 2.0 only, and take advantagee of the increased bandwidth.

Originally posted by Orren Do you know of any native PCI-X audio interfaces? I don't know of any. Nearly all PCI audio interface will work in PCI-X slots, but there are no PCI-X audio interfaces that I know of which are truly *native* PCI-X 2.0 only, and take advantagee of the increased bandwidth.

Orren

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No, and it's unfortunate. Maybe some audio developers will get on board with PCI Express but I haven't seen that yet either. But it is a different FF so that might force the issue. It's more likely that someone like Adaptec will use the increased bandwidth to develop firewire 2400 (or something) and the audio guys will jump on that.

It seems like there is even less latency with it on soft synths and programs like Mach Five. I notice no problems whatsoever. Sounds very much like I remember my 1296, so I listened to mixes I made earlier, and mixed on this thing.

I honestly think it's nice sounding!

One note...use the latest drivers. I couldn't get my machine to recognize it until I downloaded the latest ones. Other than that, it was a breeze to use.

Originally posted by LSchefman I think what I may do is try out a Traveler, for the flexibility, but plan on buying a PCI interface when I upgrade to a new G5, and have the best of both worlds.

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Les,

I haven't researched this in a while, but last time I checked the G5's only have the PCI-X slots, no regular PCI slots. You'll need to make sure that the PCI card is compatible with the PCI-X slot. For example, the Digi001 PCI card works at a different voltage than the PCI-X slot, so it isn't compatible. That kept me from getting a G5, as I didn't want to upgrade to a Digi002 - too much money at once for me!

Originally posted by Bryan T For example, the Digi001 PCI card works at a different voltage than the PCI-X slot, so it isn't compatible. That kept me from getting a G5, as I didn't want to upgrade to a Digi002 - too much money at once for me!

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I think you can get external PCI bays that hook up to G5s, but I'm not sure.

If there's only one thing that bugs me about Apple it's that: hardware and system upgrades that are not backwards compatible.